ElevationLeg 1: 2001, North America

'Kinetic Engineering'

I saw a man this morning wearing a t-shirt adorned with the legend 'Fake Love Is Not Nice', a sentiment that I can only assume scans more comfortably in its native language. We’ve had a few days off prior to the final fling in Moncton and I have enjoyed being able to start to wind-down gradually. New York has been hot but comfortably so after the excesses of last week. I’ve filled the time with social activity along with some art jaunts. There’s a really wonderful show at MOMA called 'Talk to Me', about how we interact with objects, specifically the gadgets and gizmos of the modern world. With over a hundred exhibits there’s enough in there to fascinate for hours.

I had lunch with Chuck Hoberman, the brains behind the ‘kinetic engineering’ of the incredible expanding U2360 video screen. It’s over four years ago that we started talking about this idea of making a giant, transforming LED screen so I welcomed the post-match debrief now that all the blue-sky thinking has become a piece of history. He was asking what will happen to the screen once the tour is done and in truth I don’t think anybody really knows yet. At the end of a big rock tour with any band, it’s impossible to just throw away all the expensive staging, props and toys from the show. At the same time, in all honesty, there’s no real further use for most items of this nature, so what usually happens is that they’re put into warehouses where storage fees are paid on them for about ten years… and then they get thrown away. Perhaps it’s just part of the psychology of how tours end.

Dinner with some of the tour’s lighting suppliers for further a very pleasant evening of thank yous and further debrief. That’s very much the mood of the camp in these final days of 360.